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Indiana University Football Coach Curt Cignetti was patiently answering questions one day last week. “No rush,” he said to his questioner. “When I hang up with you, I’m just going back to watching film. That’s what I do most of the time.”
At 63, Cignetti is old enough to still talk about watching “film.” It makes sense, since he first started watching film with his dad when film was still film.
“I think I first knew I wanted to be a coach when I was in third grade,” he said. “I grew up watching film with my dad and watching games from the sidelines. It was something I always loved.”
Cignetti’s father, Frank, is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame. Curt, in his first season as coach at Indiana, has turned the Hoosiers into one of the season’s biggest surprises. Indiana is 6-0 for just the second time in program history entering Saturday’s game against the University of Nebraska.
Curt played for his father for a year at West Virginia and then played his last three years there for Don Nehlen. Frank Cignetti had a splenectomy in December 1978 after being diagnosed with cancer and spent five weeks in the hospital. West Virginia fired him at the end of the 1979 season, and Curt, who had just finished his freshman season as a backup quarterback, thought about transferring before deciding to stick around.
He graduated in 1982 and went straight into coaching, starting as a graduate assistant at Pittsburgh. He coached at six schools before Nick Saban hired him for his first staff at Alabama in 2007.
In the meantime, his father, having recovered from cancer—after twice being given last rites—had taken the job at his alma mater, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and had gone 182-50-1 in 20 seasons, retiring in 2005. When the program faltered in the years that followed, Curt was offered his father’s former job in 2010.
“I was going from a perennial national championship contender to a flailing Division II program,” Cignetti said. “But I didn’t want to be a career assistant, and it was my dad’s school. Working for Nick for four years was like getting a PhD in coaching. My dad taught me all the basics of how to be a leader. Nick taught me about attention to detail every minute of every day.”
Cignetti turned IUP around, going 53-17 in six seasons. In 2016, Elon was looking for a new coach after six straight losing seasons. Given the chance to move up from Division II, Cignetti took the job and promptly went 8-4 in his first season and made the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs. A year later, after Elon lost its starting quarterback and best running back in the second week of the season, the Saints were 6-5—but still made the postseason.
“To me, 6-5 is a terrible season,” Cignetti said. “But I guess I’m spoiled.”
Cignetti has had two 6-5 teams—one at IUP and one at Elon. Those are his worst records in 14 seasons as a head coach.
Despite the injuries, Elon upset James Madison on the road, ending a 19-game home winning streak for the Dukes.
The victory was one reason JMU came to Cignetti when Coach Mike Houston left at the end of the 2018 season to coach at East Carolina. Cignetti’s instinct was to stay at Elon, but he eventually took the job.
“I had two daughters who wanted to go to med school, and they offered 3-½ times as much money,” he said. “Plus, they had all that tradition there in the FCS. In the end, I couldn’t say no.”
The Dukes lost to North Dakota State at the buzzer in the 2019 national championship game, finishing 14-2. Three seasons later, they moved up to the Football Bowl Subdivision and went 8-3 while ineligible for postseason play because they were in the NCAA’s five-year transition period. A year after that, they became a national story after starting 10-0 while the NCAA still insisted they could not play in a bowl game. That changed when fewer than the necessary 82 teams qualified for bowls, and JMU was given a bid to the Armed ForcesBowl.
Cignetti didn’t get to coach in that game. A week after the season ended, he got a call to interview at Indiana, which had fired Tom Allen after a 3-9 season. A week later, Cignetti was the Hoosiers’ coach.
“It all happened very fast,” he said. “I got the call from [Athletic Director] Scott Dolson asking me to come out and meet with him and [university president] Pam Whitten. They both impressed me right away with their commitment to making Indiana football better. I’m a believer that any job can be a good job if the commitment is there. I came home and asked my wife [Manette] how she felt about it, and she was all for it. If not, I wouldn’t have taken the job.”
Since arriving in Bloomington, Cignetti has not been shy about his ambitions. Asked at a news conference in December about how he sells himself to potential recruits, Cignetti replied: “It’s pretty simple. I win. Google me.”
So far this season, Cignetti has enhanced his search engine results. Indiana has not trailed during its six-game winning streak, the program’s longest since 1967, and has scored at least 40 points in five consecutive games for the first time in program history. Cignetti is well aware that the season’s most formidable opponents—Nebraska, Washington, Michigan State, Michigan and Ohio State—lie ahead, but he remains undaunted.
“My life’s pretty simple,” he said. “Family and football. I still have the armchair we bought 35 years ago when we first got married. Every time we move, Bett tries to get rid of it, but I won’t let her. I’ve moved a lot the last 14 years, and I need that chair for comfort—emotional comfort.”
His leadership style is also simple—and direct. “Learned that from my father,” he said. “When I talk to my players as a team or one-on-one, I don’t say a whole lot. If you go on for too long, you lose them, their minds wander. I try to make every word count because once you lose them, you aren’t getting them back.”
Does he believe Indiana is capable of challenging Ohio State and Michigan for Big Ten Conference titles?
“Put it this way: I’m not a believer in limitations,” he said. “The ceiling is whatever you make it. You are in control.”
Cignetti is 125-35 as head coach. He says Indiana will be his last job. It appears he hasn’t reached the ceiling yet.
Columnist John Feinstein is a Post contributor who also writes for Golf Digest, Golf World and does TV color on college basketball games.
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